1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an inkjet printing apparatus, and more particularly relates to an inkjet printing apparatus in which attaching and removing of a printing head on a carriage that is movable with the printing head mounted thereon, and mutual attaching and removing between the printing head and an ink supply path are respectively performed by corresponding operating levers.
2. Description of the Related Art
In this type of attaching and removing mechanisms, for example, there is a mechanism in which, for mutual attaching and removing between a printing head and an ink supply path for supplying ink to the print head, needle pipes at the ink supply path side are inserted into seal connection members, which are formed of rubber or the like, at the printing head side. There are many cases where in order to insert such needle pipes into the seal connection members for connection, a relatively large force is required. Accordingly, in the above described attaching and removing configuration, the operation force for the attaching/removing operation is reduced by using the member which utilizes leverage of an operating lever or the like. Further, apart from this, an operating lever for the attaching/removing of the printing head on the carriage is frequently provided.
The operations of these levers are usually configured to be separately performed, and therefore, an operator performs the operations of a plurality of levers. Accordingly, there is the possibility that the operator performs a wrong operation such as performing the lever operations in a wrong order. If such a wrong operation is performed, there are some cases where proper connection of an ink supply system cannot be made to cause leakage of an ink so that the printing head does not eject the ink, or the joint structure of the ink supply system or the components of the printing head are damaged.
With respect to this problem, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-234179 describes the configuration in which the wrong operation is inhibited in the halfway of the operation in the configuration provided with the two levers composed of the head set lever for attaching/removing of the printing head on the carriage, and the needle moving lever for attaching/removing of the printing head on the ink supply path. More specifically, if the needle moving lever is erroneously operated before the printing head is attached to the carriage by operation of the head set lever, the portion which is operated by the needle moving lever interferes with the head set lever to disable further operation of the needle moving lever. This configuration inhibits the error operation of the operating lever in the halfway, and also enables the operator to recognize the error operation of the lever.
However, in the configuration described in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-234179, an operation can be performed from any lever of the two operating levers. Therefore, the operator is likely to operate the lever in the wrong order. In this case, the operation is inhibited by the other one of the two levers interfering with each other halfway in the operation, but, for example, when the operator performs an operation of the lever by applying an excessively large force, there are some cases where an unnatural force working on a basis of the portion of the above described mutual interference damages a part of the apparatus.